To nobody's surprise, Roland Emmerich's $200M 2012 ruled the weekend box office. The disaster-meister's latest dollop of CGI destructo-porn raked in $65.2M, a little behind his biggest opener, the global cooling thriller The Day After Tomorrow ($68.7M in 2004), and also trailing last year's opening of Quantum of Solace on the same weekend ($67.5M).
A Christmas Carol held on well at #2, with only a 26% drop from its slightly disappointing opening, with $22.3M for a 10-day total of $63.27M. This year's other "little film that could" Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire pulled in a remarkable $5.87M on 174 screens ($33,762 per screen, which is good but not good enough to take the average-per-screen pole position) to take the #3 spot, while Men Who Stare at Goats battled poor reviews with another $5.86M, for a running total of $23.03M.
Michael Jackson's This Is It enters week three of its strictly limited two week run (do distributors have no shame?) with a 61% drop (perhaps audiences thought it was no longer playing) for $5.07M and a total of $67.19M. Widely derided, The Fourth Kind plummeted 62% to #6 with $4.60M, bringing its 10-day total to $20.44M (budget undisclosed). Both Couples Retreat (which cost an inexplicable $70M) and Paranormal Activity ($11–15,000 depending on who you believe) both crossed the $100M barrier this week, each pulling in around $4M for the weekend.
Law Abiding Citizen slipped one place to #9, with $3.79M and The Box (reportedly the recipient of some of the worst exit poll reviews in some time) just managed to stay inside the top 10 with $3.15M for a 10-day total of $13.17M. Richard Curtis's Pirate Radio managed a weak $2.90M in 882 theaters at #11, while Where the Wild Things Are is proving tenacious at #12, with $2.41M, making its total $73.44M in just over four weeks.
Fantastic Mr Fox (read my review here) opened small in just four theaters, but was by far the biggest winner on a per-screen basis, pulling in an average of $66,475, over twice the total of Precious. Expect this to do well with hipster parents over Thanksgiving.
This coming weekend sees the opening of tween juggernaut The Twilight Saga: New Moon; Spanish/English/US Pixar-wannabe Planet 51, a limited release (finally) for John Woo's Red Cliff (edited down to one 148-minute film from the original two-part epic); and Werner Herzog's ecstatically received festival favorite Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, with a back-on-form Nicolas Cage.
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